What future shock?

“There are limits to the amount of change that the human organism can absorb, and that by endlessly accelerating change without first determining these limits, we may submit masses of men to demands they simply can not tolerate. We run the high risk of throwing them into that peculiar state that I have called Future Shock.” Thus wrote Alvin Toffler in 1970.

In articulating the effect of Future Shock, Toffler observed that “US is a nation in which tens of thousands of young people flee reality by opting for drug-induced lassitude, a nation in which millions of their parents retreat into video induced stupor or alcoholic haze…”

Thankfully, this bleak vision of the future has not come to pass. Indeed, the changes have continued to accelerate, perhaps faster than what Toffler might have imagined. And yet the nation seems quite healthy, and population thrives without “opting for drug-induced lassitude or retreating to video induced stupor”.

What happened?

For one thing, human beings have proven to be much more resilient than predicted in the face of onslaught of something new all the time. Contrary to what Toffler said, the parents have not given up and “retreated into alcoholic haze”, rather they have learned how to use FaceBook and iPad.  Young people have not fled reality; rather they have embraced it. They have shaped the future through imagination and hard work. Not only have they coped; they have thrived.

And this is just the beginning, because the very technology onslaught that Toffler feared is helping us cope with itself. Our brain is no longer alone; it now has plenty of help from the likes of Google and Wikipedia. A new study confirms, what we intuitively feel, that Google is changing our brain. It is changing how and what our brain chooses to remember, thereby leveraging its existing capacity (Ref. “The Internet has become the external hard drive to our memory” by Daniel Wegner and Adrian Ward, Scientific American, November 2013).

We have not even talked about implants as a way to cope with the accelerating future. Memory implants will not just leverage our brain; they will expand it---increase capacity and processing power. The Pentagon---DARPA---is already considering restoring combat memory loss using implantable devices. How far do you think is the day when we can purchase memory sticks for our brains from the local CVS?

The problem with predictions such as those made by Toffler, or before that---much before that---Malthus, is that they extrapolate future from present, and do not take into account human ingenuity to meet challenges.  

They are the ones getting shocked by the future.

Set Point

I spent a good part of my career consulting in the transportation industry. One of the projects I did was for a group of telecommunications companies looking to develop some idea of what the societal benefits would be if the country were to be wired for broadband. This was 1991 and their objective was to use the data for investment plus, I am sure, lobbying purposes.

This project was my introduction to the science of traffic congestion, because we were trying to quantify reduction in congestion if people telecommuted (a novel idea then) instead of driving to work.  This would lead to increased productivity, a major element in calculating the societal benefits of improved telecommunications.

We came across an interesting phenomenon---a road remains equally congested even if a fraction people stop driving to work. The reason is that the non-commuting folks, who are reluctant to drive on a congested road in the morning, will now take to the wheels since fewer commuters are on the road. So, the road gets congested again---almost as if it is doomed to some level of congestion. In other words there is a set point of congestion, which is difficult to alter.

The reverse is also true. The road can become so congested that at some point the commuters get fed up and seek alternatives---car pools, transit system. So the congestion gets back to where it was---its set point.

This phenomenon of set point applies to human conditions as well. Behavior psychologists point to our happiness as something that has a set point. According to this theory, we all have an internal set point of happiness. If we try to increase our happiness, say through material acquisition, we will get some temporary improvement, much like the congested road, but in a short time we will be back to our set point of happiness.

Interestingly, just like road congestion, the reverse also applies. If the happiness is reduced, say due to a major illness, financial difficulties or death in the family, it gets back to its set point after the passage of some time.

I am now discovering similar set points in other areas as well. Take anxiety for example. Upon retirement, I thought my anxiety level would permanently reduce. It has not exactly turned out to be that way. As work related anxiety has gone, it has been replaced by that caused by the silliest of things---will I reach the theater in time? Are these the right photographs to enter in the camera club competition? Will a blizzard disrupt our planned trip to Central America?

It looks like I have a mildly anxious set point that I cannot shake off!

Americanization

It was interesting to study the Indian response to what happened to Devyani Khobragade, an Indian diplomat, who was arrested on charges of paying her maid less than (much less than) the minimum wages and lying about it on her visa application. To an American, there was nothing unusual about the incidence---there are laws that apply to everyone, no matter what your status in the society, and if you break the law you are arrested. An arrest frequently involves handcuffing and if you are jailed after that, there is strip search.

To someone in India, this was outrageous. The crime was insignificant from an Indian perspective and the punishment was unusually harsh. In India one cannot imagine that a person of high standing in the society can be arrested in this manner and thrown in jail with other criminals. That is just not done.

Another point of outrage was a sense of betrayal---why would America do such thing to harm the relationship between two countries. This reaction was puzzling to Americans because in their black and white world of crime and punishment, such soft spots do not exist.

This was clearly a case of an incidence causing two totally different reactions based on an individual's culture and biases. That by itself was interesting but not as much as how the Indians living in US reacted to the incidence.

There were clearly two camps--- one that aligned itself to the Indian interpretation, the other to the American one. To me this brought to sharp relief that fact that the immigrant community is divided into two groups, each with its own values and culture. I would call them “Indians living in America” vs. “Americans with Indian heritage”.

The Indians living in America firmly believe that they are the custodians of their native identity. They are proud of their motherland and have a strong respect for its traditions. To them the Americans with Indian heritage have sold out to the West and are ashamed of being Indians.

On the other hand, the Americans with Indian heritage believe that they have assimilated well in their new land. They are able to look at things objectively without the emotional attachment to the past, and are willing to criticize and praise America in a balanced way. They think that by clinging on to the past, the Indians living in America have remained misfits, are ungrateful, and are missing out on opportunities (besides financial) offered by the West.

Of course, neither characterization of the other group by a member of one group is entirely true and can be insulting.

A great topic to investigate further is to study who amongst us belongs to which group. As one would expect, those who have been living in the US only for few years generally consider themselves as former--- Indians living in America. What is unexpected is that many who have lived here for decades also consider themselves being a member of the same group.  

I am struggling to understand what causes some immigrants to maintain their native land identity, even after living here for decades, while some others to change and join the mainstream Americans, or Americanize, as they like to say. This is clearly not based on success one has achieved in the US; many wealthy people still consider themselves Indians living in America. Nor is it based on level of education or profession. In fact, one finds that two persons with identical background and success history in US can belong to these two different groups. One of my friends, an American of Indian heritage, experienced this at an alumni reunion in which those on the Indian side of the above incidence, a majority, hounded and berated him as a “self-hating Indian.”

So, what makes some continue being Indians living in America and what prompted some of us to become Americans with Indian heritage?

I do not have the answer, but suspect that the following factors have played a role in how you identify yourself:

•         The importance of the place you were born as a key component of your self-identity,
•         The relative contribution of  “heart vs. mind” in your decision making,
•        The environment you encountered after immigration---who you hung out with,
•        The place where you currently live, and
•        Your cohort group.

I am assuming that this will become a moot point, as the next generation takes over. They are almost certainly going to be Americans with Indian heritage.

Or are they?

No Name

When the British ruled India, they were mystified by the practice of having no last name, or surname, associated with an individual. People used to be known by their given name and their father’s name. This made it very difficult to identify who were members of the same family, an important attribute for the civil order that the British were planning to impose.

So, they passed a decree to force people to take a surname. “Sure,” said people in one part of Gujarat, and took the last name that described their profession---Patel, or farmer. Unfortunately, that profession was fairly common, so more or less the entire region became filled with Patels. We were back at square one.

That amusing incidence aside, the British were right. They eventually made the system work, perhaps with some modifications to account for a large number of people having the same last name. However, they were lucky in that people at least had names. 

What if no one has a name?

That would be unthinkable, especially in this day and age. When we are introducing ourselves to a stranger, the first thing we mention is our name.  That is our identifier, one of the defining terms for who we are.

Without having a name, the processes we have built up to create and sustain our civilization will be all gummed up. How can you open a bank account, carry out transactions, borrow a book out of library, or vote without some identifier associated with you?

On a more social note, how will you be able to deal with your friends or others you interact with? Of course, you can use descriptors like, he-with-long-hair, or one-who-walks-with-a limp, to identify who you are talking about, or to catalog in your mind your past interactions with that person.

How cumbersome and unworkable will that be? Will we have enough memory to sustain relationships with a vast network of people if they did not have names? I suppose we will be no different than our ancestors, the chimpanzees. They seem to be able sustain a social network without names. However, those are small intimate networks, not vast ones like ours. And Chimpanzees don’t have bank accounts.

The biggest mystery to me is how not having a name will affect us as individuals? How much of our personal identify is tied up with our name? Will not having a name remove an anchor, setting our ship of self-awareness adrift?

Cruz and Snowden

The rollout of Obamacare has been disastrous. Even a liberal from Massachusetts like me can agree on that. Perhaps a few more months of testing the system would have been beneficial if that was what was needed. It appears that the government agrees and will delay the completion date of the roll out by a few weeks.

“We told you so,” is what Ted Cruz and his cronies are saying. “This is precisely what we wanted the Democrats to do when we shut down the government---delay the roll out.” They may be right, but the tactics they used were totally wrong. One cannot stop the functioning of the government, and hold the full faith and credit of the country hostage to get something one wants, even if it turns out be the right thing to want.

Obama was right in standing firm. Agreeing to the Tea Party demand under the gun would have established a wrong precedence, and there will be no way to stop someone else using the same tactic to slam through another policy change of his choice, one that is not at all beneficial to the country.

End does not justify using illegal or harmful means.

Interestingly, a new drama is now being played out, which has some parallel to the above story. This one deals with NSA and the snooping it did of the heads of state of foreign countries. While NSA does need to do surveillance to identify and deter terrorist plots, it seems inconceivable that tapping of Angela Merkel (which was authorized by Bush/Cheney, by the way, not Obama) would serve any purpose. “Just because we can do something does not mean we should do it,” said Obama, and he is right.

So, Edward Snowden, who released secret documents to bring this to our notice, should be praised, yes?

Not in my opinion. Once again, end does not justify illegal or harmful means. The tactics he used are totally unacceptable, just like the tactics that Ted Cruz used.

When you are granted a security clearance, you pledge not to reveal the secrets that you are made privy to. There is a reason why something is kept secret, because revealing it can cause harm to the country. That is why disclosing state secrets, no matter what they are, is considered to be an act of treason, punishable by law. It has to be a blanket decree that is not left to personal interpretation. Allowing exceptions, just because this time around such a release did provide some benefits, would be disastrous.

Take for example someone with access to our sources in Syria. Should he release their names to Guardian, because he does not believe we should be meddling in Syria? What will be the results? Death of people who have been helping us? If we make Snowden a hero, what right do we have to blame this other disgruntled employee? Where will we draw the line?

Our government is hardly perfect--- even the most patriotic person will agree. There are major issues with the way many departments are being run. However, releasing secrets that may prove harmful to the country is not the way to bring about a change in the policy, even though it may be needed. That is akin to shutting down the government or harming our full faith and credit in order to force a change in the Obamacare roll out.

So, if you agree that what Ted Cruz did was wrong, even though what he was advocating was right, there is no way you can say what Snowden did was right, even though he helped us become aware of NSA’s alleged abuse of power.

If Cruz is an anarchist, then by the same logic, Ed Snowden is a traitor.